It seems like a lot of skritter users are students who use skritter to supplement their studies. But I know there are a lot of others like me, who are self-taught and don't have the opportunity to attend classes.

I live in China, but I work full time and have few chances to actually write characters. 99% of the time I will just type them. For all intents and purposes, the only time I actually write characters is in Skritter. I know this is not practical since the Skritter environment is more like a test environment. If I try to sit down and write a journal entry, or anything, really, it's really difficult.

What I've been doing lately is writing down the pinyin of charcters I have trouble with in Skritter, then using an actual notebook to write stories/random thoughts/journal entries using those characters. That method is kind of annoying, though, since I have to be constantly writing things down during the course of studying.

Does anyone have any practical (and not super time-consuming) suggestions for ways to take what you've recently learned in Skritter and make practical application of it?

I also have serious writer's block if I try to put the simplest thing on paper. I find studying from a text book and trying to answer questions at the end of a chapter helps, since the answer will include vocabulary just studied. Since Skritter has so many textbook lists already, I can review single words in Skritter but try to generate complete sentences with pencil in my textbook.

I attend university classes but still have little writing practice, the only chance really would be taking notes, but then I switch to pinyin because its so much faster to write. I do try to do this but for me the class time is to practice my speaking and listening skills. For writing I don't think anything beats skritter, and I think writing Chinese is just about putting a massive amount of practice hours in.

i attend university classes but i also find it difficult to write and read.

i thought of a method how to improve writing. what i am doing is i sit down every day and force myself to write what just occurs in my head or to focus on a topic that i like to express or describe.

if i dont know the character there are two ways i use. one idea is to describe the word i dont know - the other idea is to write down the pinyin and at the end of the exercise i look up the word and replace the pinying with the actual character.

JB, I don't have an answer to what you ask, but if you don't use the Star function in Skritter (I generally don't), then you can star a word instead of noting it down.
After the study session you can note which are starred and work from there...

A way to get a bit more real life practice I find is writing text messages in Chinese, obviously this relys on you having friends who can understand chinese although you can make random friends through some messaging program's, wechat being a good one. I used to do this with pinyin input and now try with writing input.

It sounds like you like the idea of writing without actually having to write.

You could try doing calligraphy. That might capture your attention and help you shed your negative views on writing.

My writing is far from good, but I can tell you a few things I do to help myself not have this same problem.

First, if you are teaching full time, try writing Chinese on the board for your students. Technically, at my job the foreigners are supposed to use 0 Chinese in class, but most people don't care if I write on the board. This is good for me because it gives me a chance to use Chinese in a more practical setting, the students enjoy seeing a foreigner writing, and as a bonus they get to laugh at me if I make a mistake. This way, I get a chance to practice what I have learned and I get to learn from the mistakes I make.

Second, I don't know about China, but in Taiwan there are guided readers for little kids. It will be written in Chinese but it has bopomofo for all the characters. This is very useful for tones and reading. There are books on every topic, from math to dinosaurs, Three Kingdoms to Little Red Riding Hood.

I have enough people come up to me wanting to speak their wacky English, I no longer have any qualms about looking like a fool myself :D

The other thing I do, which you can do as well if you are in China is this. I read every single sign around me. Every word, every character, every number. It doesn't matter if it is a sign at a coffee shop I go to every day. I read the drinks and the prices, try to visualize how to write the characters, think of the tones, anything I can. This helps me with words I already know, reinforces numbers, and gives me a chance to find new words if I can read the characters.

We are totally immersed in Chinese. Every time we step outside we have a chance to use what we learn. For me, that is far more valuable than sitting in a classroom.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. There's a lot of good ones, some that I already use, and some that I think I will try out or adapt. One thing I envy about people who study Chinese formally is that they are forced to write a lot, something that is not very common outside of the learning environment.